In the course of practicing the copending invention, Panel Surface Flaw Inspection, U.S. Ser. No. 579,971, U.S. Pat. No. 4,629,319, to which this application is a continuation in part, we have found the embodiments of FIGS. 6-8A thereof (wherein an area of, in general, a substantial portion of an object is illuminated) to be by far the most potentially useful aspect to date of the invention since it provides a whole field area view of the object distortion, and the increased comprehension which results.
This application addresses useful aspects of the invention including means for automatically locating and quantifying defects.
The general field of application of this invention applies primarily to inspection of objects such as auto bodies, auto body panels, furniture, aircraft, etc. for cosmetic or funtional defects on exterior or other surfaces which need to present a uniformly contoured appearance free of localized defects in form. "DiffractoSight", a name coined for the embodiments of FIGS. 6, 7 and 8A of the referenced invention, is extremely powerful in analyzing such defects. The unique images of surfaces and the magnified distortions thereon provided by the invention are called herein DiffractoSight images.